[ On Saturday, June 8, 2002 at 21:44:13 (-0700), Greywolf wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: discrepency beteen /bin/echo and builtin echo of /bin/sh
>
> On Sat, 8 Jun 2002, Greg A. Woods wrote:
>
> # "type" tells you whether they are or not -- I don't see why the manual
> # pages should worry about such details since they can differ with every
> # build.... The documentation need only warn you about the possibility.
>
> ...then what's the bloody good of documentation?
Well "Excuse me!" but I think you're taking execption to all the wrong
things here, and with all the wrong attitude!
The shell may, or may not, have certain commands "built in" as a trade
off between efficiency and flexibility. The documentation has warned
you of this possibility. A tool is given to you to allow you to
determine, at run-time, how a given command is implemented, should this
difference have consequence to your use of the command.
I.e. The documentation on the development machine, as you read it at the
time you wrote your program, won't do you or your program one hoot of
good when your program is run on some other machine, or when the shell
is upgraded underneath it. If you rely on the documentation for a given
instance of a the shell then you lose. Too bad, so sad, new programmer
please.
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098; <gwoods@acm.org>; <g.a.woods@ieee.org>; <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>